February 10, 2017 Lunch – Vietnamese Miso Noodle Soup with shrimp. Dinner – Sautéed Scallops in Sorrel and red onion with roasted vegetables and steamed green beans

February 10, 2017 Lunch – Vietnamese Miso Noodle Soup with shrimp. Dinner – Sautéed Scallops in Sorrel and red onion with roasted vegetables and steamed green beans

I had a doctor’s appointment at 7:30 that lasted until 9:00. I then drove to Sprouts and bought yogurt and milk and then home.

At 11:30 I made Vietnamese Miso soup with bean thread, 30 cm. Rice noodles, and wheat noodles plus dehydrated dashi, white Miso, and a cube of Pho seasoning, the last handful of spinach, two beef meatballs, a diced shallot, two mushrooms, 3 oz. of cubed tofu, and six shrimp.  I usually add dried seaweed to complete the Miso soup trifecta, but forgot today, perhaps because the spinach provided the green vegetable component.  This is a magical soup that is pretty much instant.  I use whatever is available and have frozen and dried ingredients at hand, such as heads on shrimp and beef meatballs.

   

Suzette came home around noon and we ate lunch together.

I drove to Costco after lunch to pick up the medications the doctor had prescribed and bought a dozen yellow roses for Valentines Day for Suzette.

Suzette came home at around 6:00 from the deposition tired and a little sick in the tummy, not feeling up to eating or cooking.

I decided at 7:00 to cook. I stripped the stems from the sorrel leaves we had picked from our garden on Tuesday and cut the stalks off the button portabella mushrooms I had bought at Sprouts on Wednesday and cut a thin slice of red onion and diced it and sautéed this e three ingredients in about three oz. of butter and about ½ T. of dried marjoram in a medium skillet.  I cut the remaining 1/3 lb. of string beans into bite-sized thirds and put them into a Pyrex baking dish with an ounce or two of water and a squeeze of lemon juice and covered it with Saran.  I then scooped about 1 lb. of roasted vegetables into another Pyrex baking dish and covered it with Saran.

In the afternoon I had fetched a bottle of 2010 Nessa Albariño and a bottle of 2008 Concannon Sauvignon Blanc and chilled them in the fridge.

Suzette wanted a glass of wine before dinner, so I opened the bottle of Albariño and poured her a glass.  The wine had darkened to a deep yellow color and the cork had dried out and the wine had oxidized, which gave it a very nutty sherry-like taste.  She drank her glass and I used my glass of wine to flavor the scallop dish.

When the sorrel sauce and mushrooms had softened I added the six scallops (Sprouts $12.99/lb.) and sautéed them for a couple of minutes while I heated the string beans and roasted vegetables in the microwave.

I added about two T. of Albariño from my glass to the sauce to thin it out a bit as it had stiffened during cooking.  I then poured glasses of the Concannon Sauvignon Blanc, which is remarkably, still good and we plated the scallops, string beans, and roasted vegetables.

Neither of us had much appetite for wine.  Suzette did not finish her two scallops, so I ate the four scallops and most of the roasted vegetables and string beans.

I liked the dish a lot and was particularity impressed with how the chopped sorrel went into solution when sautéed with butter.

Bon Appetit